


I Will Fear No Hat (For Thou Art with Me)

by eLOCIn, Percilout



Series: The (Bat-)Hat-Saga [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff and Crack, Hatober, M/M, this Clark can be physically ill if it comes from within himself, this got weirdly emotional
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 09:15:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26969584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eLOCIn/pseuds/eLOCIn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Percilout/pseuds/Percilout
Summary: Clark rarely felt physically ill. What happened today, though, quickly got the better of him.Why, oh, why did this always have to happen to them?Hatober Day 12 - Bat-Hat
Relationships: Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne
Series: The (Bat-)Hat-Saga [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1968073
Comments: 10
Kudos: 43





	I Will Fear No Hat (For Thou Art with Me)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [santino](https://archiveofourown.org/users/santino/gifts).



> This was supposed to be pure crack but then it got weirdly emotional but Oh Well.
> 
> This won't make much sense if you haven't read the first part (and the nut thing won't make much sense unless you are in That One Superbat Server).
> 
> My biggest thanks to my friends santino and Loke and also Misty who did some last-minute beta-reading!

Clark rarely felt physically ill. The blinding pain of Kryptonite was mostly so bad that he wouldn’t have been able to describe it as something making him feel _ill_. It just hurt. A lot. On this day, though, as he was walking into the manor after work — walking into the old building that he had recently started calling his home — he had a bad feeling rumbling in his gut.

There were voices, lots of voices, coming from the dining room on the other end of the hallway. It was the usual laughter and grumbling but interspersed in it was the voice of the youngest member of the family, sounding more than just a little panicked. It was making him feel sick.

Another, female voice mixed itself into the sounds and it wasn’t helping Clark’s thoughts calm down at all. He hadn’t heard this specific one in a year and he hadn’t quite missed it.

Shortly before he reached the dining room, he called out, “Zee, what are you doing here?”

Zatanna turned to him and in doing so revealed the reason for her visit.

As Clark saw the frowning face on the leathery material, his condition got the better of him and he fainted on the spot.

~~bat~~ hat

When Clark came to again, he was lying on the floor, feet pulled up on a couple couch cushions, and had the worried faces of a horde of bat-kids looking down at him.

“Clark, are you all right?” Tim asked as he handed him a peanut butter Kit Kat. “Here, the nuts will give you strength.”

“Señor and Mister Nutz will help you get to your wits back,” Dick added, nodding.

If Clark hadn’t already been confused, he would have been so now. Deciding to ignore whatever the kids were talking about, he tried to sit up. But seeing the brown hat perched on the edge of the table, he promptly lay back down again.

“Oh god,” he groaned, closing his eyes.

“Kent!” the voice that still held a trace of panic sounded. “This is your fault!”

“Damian,” Bruce growled from his spot above them, “this is no one’s fault but Mr. Mxyzptlk’s.”

Hearing that name again, Clark felt sick once more and he thanked the gods that he was already lying on the floor. He could feel a soft hand sneaking itself into his own and looked up to send a smile at Cass. Bruce’s daughter always knew when he needed something to ground him and he was more than grateful for her effort.

“But Father—”

Probably sensing that the chaos would never stop, Zatanna interrupted them with a cough.

“From what I could figure out, it looks like Mxy somehow managed to put a recurring curse on Bruce here. I’ll try to find a solution to the problem but I think Bruce will return to his old self by the end of the day anyway. So, see you guys next year with the remedy to your troubles!” Zatanna told them with a smirk. The last thing she did before she, once again, left without having been of much help was to lean down to Clark and whisper a “my biggest thanks last year’s pictures” into his ear.

Clark hoped no one else had heard her last remark, as Bruce had forcefully deleted all evidence of his hat-being as soon as he had regained enough energy to leave the bed. Clark had only gotten away with the photos Dick and Tim had taken by speeding to the Fortress and uploading them to the database. Although how he had gotten away with _that_ was still a mystery to him. In his mind, Bruce always knew about anything.

Him being able to save those pictures was probably tempting destiny. Him sending a few of them to Zee was most possibly the crossing of the line, resulting in the repetition of their most leathery and creaking problem yet. Because Karma was a bitch. (But don’t let Ma hear him say that.)

Still lying on the floor, Clark groaned and looked up towards Bruce. With a pout, he muttered, “And I was so looking forward to our anniversary dinner.”

The kids, probably sensing the foul mood in the air, rushed off towards the cave. They knew better than to stay and having to deal with a sad Kryptonian.

“We will survive postponing it till tomorrow, Clark.”

“I know,” he whined, “but that still means it isn’t on our actual—”

“ _I heard something happened again?!”_ Jason yelled, crashing into the room. Bruce just groaned as his second-eldest lay his sight on him and burst out laughing. “Oh god, this is perfect. _Batman Episode VI: The Return of the Bat-Hat_. We should film this and put it in cinemas worldwide.”

“I’m sure Tim and Dick are already trying their best to make that reality,” Bruce grumbled into the rim of himself.

“This is _great_ ,” Jason said as he took the hat off the table and deposited his once-human father on his head. Despite all the protests coming from above him, he kept laughing and bellowed an enthusiastic, “ _You shall not pass!_ ”

The Kryptonian had never seen his partner look quite as defeated as he did in that moment. His eyes were closed and his expression screamed of giving up. All the physical sickness Clark had felt before was suddenly gone as he instead started worrying about the man he loved most in this world.

“Jason,” he said, softly but with badly-hidden anger resonating in his words, “I’d rather you didn’t do that right now.”

Jason looked down at where he was still sitting on the floor, wide-eyed surprise clearly written on his face. “Uh, okay, sure. I’ll just,” he gestured at the door, “find the others.”

Bruce, again settled on the dinner table, shot him an incredulous look. Clark knew he had never really acted this way before, so bold and vehement, particularly not when it came to Jason. But he couldn’t let his partner be hurt like that, especially not by his own children.

“Clark,” Bruce whispered and his name had never rung sweeter in his ears. It sounded almost like a prayer, one for only them to hear. “Clark, take us upstairs.”

~~bat~~ hat

The bedroom didn’t change much in the past year. The decoration included a few more pictures of the two of them together and one of the bedside tables now held several journals and a spare pair of glasses (it was surprisingly easy to lose them when speeding into the super-suit). Apart from that, it didn’t see any development except for the fact that it was now _theirs_ instead of just Bruce’s.

It was strange to be at the same point again after a whole year together; strange seeing Bruce not be himself again, seeing him be a _hat_ of all things. Their positions in the room — Bruce in the middle of the bed, Clark sitting on one side of it — mirrored the ones they were in in their past. It made Clark feel like he was violently taken out of his own time and pushed back to where he didn’t belong.

He did what he had done back then and snatched Bruce back up to hold him in his arms. Although, unlike the last time, he embraced him tightly and buried his face in the tip of his partner’s current form.

“Crk—” Bruce groaned from where he was pressed into his chest. “ ‘et ‘e go.”

Disobeying him, he instead smothered him even more, quietly sniffling into the hat’s crown.

“I don’t want to. This day has been really bad for an hour now and it doesn’t look like it will get any better and I don’t want to let you go.”

Silence reigned over them for a while until Bruce moved to look up and thus freed his face from the tight hold. “I know I don’t say it often but that’s part of why I love you. Your willingness to stay here, with me, even when everything is going to shit.”

Looking down at Bruce, he smiled softly at that and, with another sniffle, said, “I love you too.”

Embarrassingly enough, it came as a surprise to him when, after their repeated declaration of love, Bruce turned back into his human form.

“Oh. I should have expected this, shouldn’t I?”

“Why do you think I was so relaxed about this?” a very naked Bruce asked from his position in Clark’s lap.

He looked into his love’s eyes, the ones that were fortunately not surrounded by stiff leather anymore but by soft skin again, and started laughing.

“Gods, I feel so stupid, I was worrying so much about something we already had the solution to.”

The room was filled with both of their laughter for a while — Bruce’s a bit more subdued — until he stopped to smile and ask, “Bruce?”

“Yes, Clark?”

“Do you still want to go to dinner?”

bat

**Author's Note:**

> (AND THEN THEY HAVE SEX. AGAIN. BECAUSE THEY DESERVE IT AFTER WHAT THEY HAD TO GO THROUGH. AGAIN. AND THEN AFTERWARDS THEY GO OUT TO HAVE THEIR ANNIVERSARY DINNER AND HAVE FUN. (And then they have sex. Again.))
> 
> Hope you liked this! If so, maybe leave a comment and check out my other fics :D  
> Good day to you and see ya when I next have something to post!


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